Former Mayor Alan Corlin this morning laid down a sizzling criticism of County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and the crowded community meeting he led last night on environmentally safe oil drilling in the Baldwin Hills field.
As one of the few dissenting voices in the new Supervisor’s 2 1/2-month-old campaign to drastically revise a document approved by the Board of Supes last year, Mr. Corlin said:
“Ridley-Thomas is moving too slowly and too vaguely on the Community Standards District.
“The time for meetings on this subject is long past. It is time for action.
“This was the guy who was going to hit the ground running when he was elected last November. I haven’t seen anything.
“He needs to show us the leadership that he said he would provide.”
Mr. Corlin, a two-term City Councilman presently term-limited out of office, was a prominent supporter of Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s rival, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks. Nearly all of the top layer of City Hall officials were on the Ridley-Thomas bandwagon. Acrpss the aisle, Mr. Corlin stood his ground.
An Independent View
He insisted that today’s blistering assessment had nothing to do with a vanquished opponent, Mr. Parks. “That ship has sailed,” he said.
Mayor Andy Weissman, who led off a long list of almost entirely Supervisor-supporting speakers at the meeting, said he, too, left the West Los Angeles College auditorium disappointed.
For a very different reason.
It was because the perceived villain in the scenario, the Plains Exploration & Production Co., chose not to attend.
If their refusal to appear was not quite the equivalent of a wedding where either the groom or the bride bails out, PXP’s absence bordered on insulting, Mr. Weissman said. Given the state of pending legislation against them and their apparent refusal to negotiate, PXP’s attitude smacks of “my way or the highway,” he added.
Mr. Corlin’s criticism against Mr. Ridley-Thomas was much tougher.
“We don’t need any more feel-good meeetings,” said the former Mayor.
“We need to know what Ridley-Thomas is going to do to make us feel good. There was nothing new last night. Everything he heard, he knew when he came to office.
“Having public meetings is not, of course, a bad thing. But he needs to be called out to find out exactly what he is going to do.
“Mark needs to let community leaders, like John Kuechle and Ken Kutcher, know what kind of CSD he will present so they can study it.
“I would have been happier last night — I expected the Supervisor to tell us what he has learned since taking office and then show us what he is doing to shape a meaningful CSD that the stakeholders can discuss,” Mr. Corlin said.
